Causing OutOfMemoryError in Frame by Frame Animation in Android

I had the same problem. Android loads all the drawables at once, so animation with many frames causes this error.

I ended up creating my own simple sequence animation:

public class AnimationsContainer {
    public int FPS = 30;  // animation FPS

    // single instance procedures
    private static AnimationsContainer mInstance;

    private AnimationsContainer() {
    };

    public static AnimationsContainer getInstance() {
        if (mInstance == null)
            mInstance = new AnimationsContainer();
        return mInstance;
    }

    // animation progress dialog frames
    private int[] mProgressAnimFrames = { R.drawable.logo_30001, R.drawable.logo_30002, R.drawable.logo_30003 };

    // animation splash screen frames
    private int[] mSplashAnimFrames = { R.drawable.logo_ding200480001, R.drawable.logo_ding200480002 };


    /**
     * @param imageView 
     * @return progress dialog animation
     */
    public FramesSequenceAnimation createProgressDialogAnim(ImageView imageView) {
        return new FramesSequenceAnimation(imageView, mProgressAnimFrames);
    }

    /**
     * @param imageView
     * @return splash screen animation
     */
    public FramesSequenceAnimation createSplashAnim(ImageView imageView) {
        return new FramesSequenceAnimation(imageView, mSplashAnimFrames);
    }

    /**
     * AnimationPlayer. Plays animation frames sequence in loop
     */
public class FramesSequenceAnimation {
    private int[] mFrames; // animation frames
    private int mIndex; // current frame
    private boolean mShouldRun; // true if the animation should continue running. Used to stop the animation
    private boolean mIsRunning; // true if the animation currently running. prevents starting the animation twice
    private SoftReference<ImageView> mSoftReferenceImageView; // Used to prevent holding ImageView when it should be dead.
    private Handler mHandler;
    private int mDelayMillis;
    private OnAnimationStoppedListener mOnAnimationStoppedListener;

    private Bitmap mBitmap = null;
    private BitmapFactory.Options mBitmapOptions;

    public FramesSequenceAnimation(ImageView imageView, int[] frames, int fps) {
        mHandler = new Handler();
        mFrames = frames;
        mIndex = -1;
        mSoftReferenceImageView = new SoftReference<ImageView>(imageView);
        mShouldRun = false;
        mIsRunning = false;
        mDelayMillis = 1000 / fps;

        imageView.setImageResource(mFrames[0]);

        // use in place bitmap to save GC work (when animation images are the same size & type)
        if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 11) {
            Bitmap bmp = ((BitmapDrawable) imageView.getDrawable()).getBitmap();
            int width = bmp.getWidth();
            int height = bmp.getHeight();
            Bitmap.Config config = bmp.getConfig();
            mBitmap = Bitmap.createBitmap(width, height, config);
            mBitmapOptions = new BitmapFactory.Options();
            // setup bitmap reuse options. 
            mBitmapOptions.inBitmap = mBitmap;
            mBitmapOptions.inMutable = true;
            mBitmapOptions.inSampleSize = 1;
        }
    }

    private int getNext() {
        mIndex++;
        if (mIndex >= mFrames.length)
            mIndex = 0;
        return mFrames[mIndex];
    }

    /**
     * Starts the animation
     */
    public synchronized void start() {
        mShouldRun = true;
        if (mIsRunning)
            return;

        Runnable runnable = new Runnable() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                ImageView imageView = mSoftReferenceImageView.get();
                if (!mShouldRun || imageView == null) {
                    mIsRunning = false;
                    if (mOnAnimationStoppedListener != null) {
                        mOnAnimationStoppedListener.AnimationStopped();
                    }
                    return;
                }

                mIsRunning = true;
                mHandler.postDelayed(this, mDelayMillis);

                if (imageView.isShown()) {
                    int imageRes = getNext();
                    if (mBitmap != null) { // so Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 11
                        Bitmap bitmap = null;
                        try {
                            bitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(imageView.getResources(), imageRes, mBitmapOptions);
                        } catch (Exception e) {
                            e.printStackTrace();
                        }
                        if (bitmap != null) {
                            imageView.setImageBitmap(bitmap);
                        } else {
                            imageView.setImageResource(imageRes);
                            mBitmap.recycle();
                            mBitmap = null;
                        }
                    } else {
                        imageView.setImageResource(imageRes);
                    }
                }

            }
        };

        mHandler.post(runnable);
    }

        /**
         * Stops the animation
         */
        public synchronized void stop() {
            mShouldRun = false;
        }
    }
}

Usage:

FramesSequenceAnimation anim = AnimationsContainer.getInstance().createSplashAnim(mSplashImageView);
anim.start();
  • don't forget to stop it...

I assume that your animation frame images are compressed (PNG or JPG). The compressed size is not useful for calculating how much memory is needed to display them. For that, you need to think about the uncompressed size. This will be the number of pixels (320x480) multiplied by the number of bytes per pixel, which is typically 4 (32 bits). For your images, then, each one will be 614,400 bytes. For the 26-frame animation example you provided, that will require a total of 15,974,400 bytes to hold the raw bitmap data for all the frames, not counting the object overhead.

Looking at the source code for AnimationDrawable, it appears to load all of the frames into memory at once, which it would basically have to do for good performance.

Whether you can allocate this much memory or not is very system dependent. I would at least recommend trying this on a real device instead of the emulator. You can also try tweaking the emulator's available RAM size, but this is just guessing.

There are ways to use BitmapFactory.inPreferredConfig to load bitmaps in a more memory-efficient format like RGB 565 (rather than ARGB 8888). This would save some space, but it still might not be enough.

If you can't allocate that much memory at once, you have to consider other options. Most high performance graphics applications (e.g. games) draw their graphics from combinations of smaller graphics (sprites) or 2D or 3D primitives (rectangles, triangles). Drawing a full-screen bitmap for every frame is effectively the same as rendering video; not necessarily the most efficient.

Does the entire content of your animation change with each frame? Another optimization could be to animate only the portion that actually changes, and chop up your bitmaps to account for that.

To summarize, you need to find a way to draw your animation using less memory. There are many options, but it depends a lot on how your animation needs to look.